[CTQ Smartcast] How To Change Your Mind, with Dr. Bhooshan Shukla
(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
Dr. Bhooshan Shukla is one of the most respected child and adolescent psychiatrists in India. But other than professional proficiency, he is the proverbial cool guy whom you can strike up a conversation on all the mysteries of the mind and brain. So in this special Smartcast, we stray away from what he is normally known for and go down the rabbit-hole of the mind-behaviour connection. Here is Doc Bhooshan in conversation with CTQ’s Harish and Ramanand.
(You can also read Dr Bhooshan’s rapid fire answers in our Curious Cases series. Follow him on Twitter for more interesting, counter-intuitive takes on the world. If you are a parent, joining his free Telegram channel is highly recommended.)
Some topics we cover
How to deliberately change your mind
Influences on the mind while forming habits
Flexibility of the brain
How our surroundings changes our personalities
Something about the brain that all should know
Role of hypnosis and negative emotions in self change
Using metaphors to communicate better
Dr Bhooshan’s recommendations
Some interesting books, people, ideas, and programs mentioned
Sigmund Freud / Interpretation of Murder
Dr Bhooshan’s self-hypnosis program (watch his TEDx Talk on the topic)
Skin in the game & Fooled by Randomness / Nassim Taleb
The reading compounds at CTQ Compounds
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
[00:00:00]
Dr. Bhooshan Shukla: One of the biggest things about emotion is that people talk about emotion as if they have control of it. One of the biggest learnings from mental health is that we do not have control on how we feel. We are not responsible for how we feel. The only thing that we control is how do we respond to that.
Harish Kumar: Hello, Bhooshan. Welcome. Just to do a quick introduction to our listeners. Dr. Bhooshan Shukla is a child psychiatrist and a parenting coach. His work on preventing child abuse was featured on shows like Amir Khan's Satyamev Jayate. His advice on mental health regularly appears on all kinds of media, from radio to podcasts to newspapers. Welcome, Bhooshan.
J Ramanand: Welcome, Bhooshan.
Dr. Bhooshan Shukla: Thank you, Harish. Thank you, Ramanand. Just a small correction, my work is about preventing child abuse.
Harish: Yes. We'll not be talking too much about parenting. But we would like to pick your brains on a host of other things. We're recording this episode today on 2nd of October, Gandhi Jayanti, and quite mindful of the fact that you've quoted him and spoken about him on Twitter on a bunch of things. One of his most famous quotes is, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." We hear so much about change, and change being a constant and you should always be ready to adapt and change, and all that. But biologically, or neurologically, how easy is it for adults to deliberately change their mind about something?
Dr. Bhooshan: Again, to quote Mahatma Gandhi, he also said that if you find discrepancy [00:02:00] between two of my statements, accept the latest one, because I may have changed my mind, and I do. That is the most important thing for us to remember right in the beginning, that we do change our mind. And we are supposed to. People who don't change their mind are kind of ossified fossils. That is absolutely essential and that's natural. We do that all the time.
Harish: Is there something that we don't know, and we are changing our minds. How do you deliberately go and change your mind? Does the brain come in the way of that? 'No, I don't want to change.'
Dr. Bhooshan: Whatever I'm going to speak right now Harish is largely as hypotheses and with some practical evidence to that. We do not have one research paper, proving each fact or each centre that I speak with a randomized control trial, which is supposed to be the gold standard of evidence here. You will realize that there will be a huge amount of ethical and technical issues in conducting each of these research.
When most of the research money is actually going towards breast implants and penile enhancement on the internet, it is very difficult to find research money for stuff like changing your mind and all of that. So, we are still in the zone of hypotheses and empiricism. Let me put that up straight. So I don't want anybody holding me by the neck and saying, “Where is the randomized control trial for the sentence that you said?'' The stuff about the mind is that our idea of the mind being a static thing is actually totally false. There is nothing static in the mind.
We know that from memory, that if you recall the same event, say even 20 minutes away from each other, you're going to remember different details of it. Law has put in a lot of effort in examining this memory, [00:04:00] and people who have observed exactly the same event have different memories as well. So it is all about how you encode that event, how it gets modified, how it is stored, and how you recall it over and over again. What we call principles or our bedrocks of thinking are again ultimately part of our memory. It is bedrock as we remember it, or as we choose to apply, or as we choose not to apply. Actually, anything being static itself is an illusion, there is nothing static there at all.
Harish: Right. So, what about people trying to change habits or learning new things? What is the role of the mind there?
Dr. Bhooshan: The whole neuroplasticity as we talk about, where the neurons changed themselves, or we do something by which the neuronal architecture is changed, neuronal connections are changed. Their firing rate can be changed, their connections with each other can be changed. All sorts of things can happen in our brain, which is essentially learning. Any kind of change that happens and a new behaviour, a new habit, new memory, new process is established, we call that learning. That is a very broad definition of learning at neuronal level that any neuronal change is learning. So, when we talk about people changing their habits, or anything like that, or any change, which we believe comes from the mind, it is essentially a change of neuronal structure. Change in the way those neurons function. So that is where it really starts.
That brings us to the philosophical question of how do you actually define your mind. That makes it really complex, because for a long time, we believed that a function of the brain is 'mind'. Like the brain has many functions, being 'mind' is one of the [00:06:00] functions of the brain. So the mind is not a real entity, but a brain. But then people started studying people who have amputated their limbs or have had some drastic change in their body, and they realized that that changes your brain. Then we realized that the mind is a distributed function throughout your body. Mind is not just restricted to your brain. So, the change can start anywhere. Particularly both of you who are so fond of sports know that a sportsman's mind actually resides in his body. They have a distribution of mind, which is mainly in their body. The change of mind is the change of your being, if I were to put it very broadly. I'm sorry if it sounds too philosophical or hooly.
But our body is ultimately what we are. Again, there are some people who are taking it even a bit further, that it is not just your body, but your surroundings. It is even people around you. For example, I just received this lovely cup of coffee. My wife makes coffee for herself at this point of time in the morning. As a loving person does, she shares a cup with me. If she changes her habit of drinking coffee, my habit is automatically going to change. So, my mind is going to change without any interference from me. So now should I say that my mind resides outside my body as well? Well, it looks like it does. Because say, tomorrow the government of India puts a ban on Twitter and Zoom. We will be using something else. We will be changing our habits. So our mind will be changed by a big external influence. So honestly, this is going to be really, really complicated. We don't even know where the boundary exists if the boundary exists at all.
Harish: Correct. So are we talking more in the realm of influences? Is that something that we can use as a placeholder for mind?
Dr. Bhooshan: Yeah, sure. It is about influences. [00:08:00] And it is about flexibility of the brain as well. What can the brain adapt to? For a long time, we all thought that as we age, our adaptability goes down. That's why children look very different. But older people look pretty much similar. That was our assumption and how wrong we were. Along comes WhatsApp, and you see an entire generation ranging from 55 years to 95 years, happily adopting to a new technology and doing something with that. That means learning does not extinguish itself. We know that even people who are having dementia, whose brain is being eaten away by Parkinsonic process or Alzheimeric process at one end, can still learn things at the other end. So we are still digging. It's been going on for a long time.
I remember when I was a medical student, a psychiatry resident, I think this was '97 or '98. I don't remember the exact year where Eric Kandel got his Nobel Prize for studying neuronal structures and memory. And we thought now we know everything about it. We had a book written by him in the library, and I happily went on and read it. And I said, 'Okay, now we know everything that we need to know about memory.' That was 23 years ago. I still feel and I'm sure it's the same feeling for a lot of people around there, that it's still evolving. They're still learning things there. So again, we don't know where we are.
Ramanand: Also, since we're talking about external influences that are underrated. What is this whole notion of the biome? We have a lot of bacterial influences on us. There are these anecdotes of how certain bacteria can change insect behaviour. So, could that also be happening to us?
Dr. Bhooshan: One of the most famous experiments that we know about mammals, the invention [00:10:00] was about Toxoplasma gondii and cats, and how cats get transformed because of this parasite. How much does this actually apply to human beings, there is still anecdotal evidence. What we know for sure is that a significant portion of our body, or bodyweight is actually bacteria in our gut, and God knows where else. The kind of vitamins that they generate, the other chemicals that they generate or maybe they even generate neurochemicals, which act as neurotransmitters could be affecting our baseline anxiety level, it could be affecting our mood. That is where we are right now. God knows what more will come through that.
So again, are we ourselves? This will take us to a very deep philosophical discussion about exactly what is our entity? Then somebody will spring up and say, 'See here you're talking about ancient Indian philosophy of we actually being the consciousness, which is part of the larger consciousness,' so that term Aham Brahmāsmi kind of thing. I don't know whether we'll be able to get anything practical out of it, will it stop me from picking my nose and using this handkerchief to scratch my nose instead of actually scratching it, because that looks very terrible? I don't know. But then I said that if you found Brahmāsmi, this is also Brahma, Brahma is meeting Brahma and solving Brahma's problems.
Harish: So going back to ancient philosophy that Hindi muhavra, that someone who's very tall, uska dimaag ghutne mein hota hai, is what I used to hear. So, that's not so unscientific is what you're saying then?
Dr. Bhooshan: Well, unless they have those brain-altering bacteria in their knee, we don't know.
Harish Kumar: Coming to, again, I've seen you quote Daniel Kahneman a lot, [00:12:00] Thinking, Fast and Slow, that's one of our favourite books as well. This whole duality of System One and System Two thinking, it sounds great when we read it, it seems like that's how things are happening. But is that valid? Do you think there is an academic aspect to it? Your comment on that.
Dr. Bhooshan: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky ended up getting the Nobel Prize for this System One and System Two thinking and its impact on financial decision making. I honestly believe that like a lot of other Nobel laureates, the Nobel Committee has done a huge injustice to them. They picked up the most irrelevant part of their research and gave the Nobel prize to that, whereas the real impact is system one, system two. See, we knew this all along, right from the time of Freud.
The first person to point that out and gather some empirical data about it was Sigmund Freud, who said that there is existence of subconscious and unconscious. Now, we use these terms so easily. We don't even doubt that. But we have to realize, just 100 years ago, when Sigmund Freud talked about it, it was non-existent. He actually invented something that people didn't know or discovered something that we were not aware of, that our behaviour, our thoughts, our emotions, our entire life is generated by this very strong subterranean current, that we are not even aware of.
The typical simile given to that is a river, that when you look at the surface, the river is flowing very gently and very nicely. You step into it, and you get swept away by the current which is under. This is what Freud talked about. This was their huge invention. They actually devised experiments to prove that this physically exists. The biases... even before Daniel Kahneman [00:14:00] in '40s and '50s, we have had a surge in therapy movement, probably in '60s, and cognitive therapy talked about we having schema, we having some first principle thinking in our mind, which is almost unchangeable, and that drives our mind, and you have an entire therapy process, which changes the schema, and then you become a person who thinks differently. Because he thinks differently, he moves differently, then he behaves differently. And then he or she is a different person altogether. So whatever was being used in therapy, whatever was being used by salesmen all along, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky actually proved that it has a neuronal basis beyond any doubt.
Harish: A related question, again, something that has been quite in vogue these days, this fixed mindset and growth mindset. I like to believe that I have a growth mindset.
Dr. Bhooshan: Everybody does it.
Harish: But listening to what you've said till now, I think everyone has a growth mindset. But is there a story that you're also telling yourself there? Is there a narrative that you are justifying to yourself? Post Facto justification that yes, this is what I am. The actual truth is something completely different.
Dr. Bhooshan: I think most of our listeners are also familiar with Yuval Noah Harari, and he has made this story concept very popular now. His criteria of differentiating between what is story and what is not, is that if it can hurt, then it is life. It is not a story. His famous example in that interview, I think, given by Reliance foundation, I don't know exactly where it was. But you see that on YouTube, he says that you talk about a temple of a concept or a mosque or a church. If that falls down, does it hurt? [00:16:00] So, the temple didn't hurt. So that means it is a story. Now, I know that just with the Babri demolition verdict coming up yesterday, a day before, this is a very volatile statement. And I may lose my Twitter account because of this.
But the fact still remains that this is one way of thinking that he has put forth there. If something hurts us, then that is real and we all have our personal stories. In my child psychiatric practice, many times I ask parents about why did they name their child, why they give that particular name to the child. Often there is a story behind it. That story tells you the story in parents' minds. Many times the child is hearing that for the first time. That changes the child's perception as well. So, yes, there are stories, stories are true. If we modify the stories, we can change the whole being there. They're extremely powerful. We know that with our liking for cinema, for all kinds of literature, even soap operas and myths and mythology. There are stories and that's an easy way to remember very complex things. It's an oversimplified way of remembering things.
Ramanand: I had a question on the power of the story to change one's mind. Going back to our earlier topic, which is that, and we will get to things like self-hypnosis a little later, but just to comment on the power of the story, do you tell people to refashion? Is that what you are trying to change? That's the lever that you have, in terms of changing how they act and how they behave?
Dr. Bhooshan: This is a little bit more complex. I'll try to attempt to answer that question. This is entirely my opinion, [00:18:00] I don't know if this is scientifically substantiated. If that story gives you a power to override your instincts. That is what I feel. Not only is it an anchoring point of your thinking and your being, but when you need to change, and if you buy a story, that story helps you override those instincts.
Let me give you an example. Let us take the most extreme example where a bunch of people actually believed that they could die. They can give away their life for the so-called larger majority. Technically we call it our armed forces. Here are a small number of people out of the population carefully selected, trained in a way to kill and to die whenever it is necessary. Even their mottos are in the same way that nation first, people second, and self last, on similar lines. So, what is the story here? For you and me to think that I want to get up, go there and be ready to die, is a very different proposition.
So how do you people get to do such difficult things? Do that with emotional pride, or an emotion of pride there, and their family agreeing to it and all the complex things that go on with them? Typically, for an Indian who finds it difficult to stand at a signal for 20 seconds. Somebody going and dying for you is an incredible thing. How do we do that? This goes completely against instinct, that there are bullets whizzing over my head. I know that if I take the next 10 steps, my probability of living goes down quite significantly. How do I do that? Because there is a huge amount of training involved. But there is a story involved as well. That story brings that young man to the Armed Forces, makes him undergo all that training and makes a phenomenal soldier [00:20:00] out of him. This is where the story works, it can drive you against your instincts when you need bigger change. The magnitude of change or the difficulty of change demands an equally powerful story.
Harish: By story, you mean multi-sensory, right?
Dr. Bhooshan: Yes. Because I use self-hypnosis, I teach self-hypnosis, I have realized that multi-sensory experience makes it more real. So, the story has to be tangible, as they say, you should be able to taste it, you should be able to feel it under your skin, you should be able to feel it inside you, and it is driving you and that is where your multi-sensory experience comes into play. Even when you read the mythology or the history, itihaas, as it is called in Indian literature, which is our Ramayana and Mahabharata. And when you actually read the original stuff, it has a huge amount of adjectives. I used the initial part of lockdown to read Ramayana and Mahabharata by Bibek Debroy, or his translation of the critical edition. I've seen those work. The adjectives that they use, the descriptions that they use, the colors that they use, I think these are classics, and one needs to use them to realize, to change one's mind, how powerful stories can be, and what really goes into it. The more elaborate, the more real-life like the experience, the easier it is for your brain to believe it.
Harish: I'll take a quick detour here. We've been talking with a lot of companies who are our clients, and brought this whole remote work, especially now that people have moved away from their offices to homes. This seems to be one of those [00:22:00] levers that they're suddenly lost in terms of how to influence the minds of the employees. It was so much easier for these people to think in a certain way when they were in office. Because, that was how the surroundings were and they were very carefully deliberately designed.
Now suddenly, they have lost all those sensory inputs, and now they're sitting in their bedrooms, are they still going to think in the same way? And we've been actually quoting the examples of organized religion and mass political leaders that this is how they've actually built these stories. That's how they've got the power that they have. We should draw those parallels from those worlds, in this context, as well. So any quick thoughts on that?
Dr. Bhooshan: Let's look at what I have done here. I have no right to comment on companies and anything like that. I've never run a company. I've never been trained in HR. So my experience comes from clinical practice. The background that you see behind me, this is my bedroom, there is a TV on this corner, which is never used and you have a few paintings on this wall behind me. I have been using this for my e-consultations most of the time.
I sit in different rooms, but the background is pretty much the same. I wear a collared shirt, I may be wearing shorts, but my client won't see that. But I try to maintain a clinic-like environment for my patients. What changes quite dramatically though is my patients, because now I'm seeing them sitting in their home. They try to tidy up, to do things and all of that, but I do get to see their homes sitting at my home, the data that was not available to me before. Some of them I have met in the clinic and now I'm seeing them sitting at their home. I can tell you, they're different people. [00:24:00] So where we sit, what we wear, our surroundings, definitely change certain aspects of our personality. It makes us more guarded on some fronts, but more open on some other fronts as well. So you're actually dealing with a different person altogether.
As it is, a lot of the software industry had to cross that rubicon a long time ago, by allowing people to eat at their desk, decorate their desk, not wear formal clothes, call each other by first name, just walk up to people and start talking straight away, etc. A lot of things were changed in this industry a long time ago. But the biggest change that has happened is that now you are at home and you're in a tricky situation and a lot of people tell me that it's not comfortable at all. My guess is that once this pandemic is over and the way we are going about it, it will be over soon, we are quite likely to go back to a hybrid model where office experience is included in your weekly work. There are very few people who will happily continue working at home, and then HR will get their handle again.
The difficulty that HR is facing is that how do we control their mind now that they are physically away from us, when we have their bodies, we could control their mind as well. Dr. Shukla was right that it is not just the brain, it is the whole body. Okay, so they will get these bodies back again. That is my guess. It's going to be a complex thing. But people will be eager to go back to their offices. People will prefer being in offices is my take. There's free food out there, guys.
Harish: So what's something about the brain that more people should know?
Dr. Bhooshan: I think the first thing that people should know is that they have a brain. This may sound very cynical. But that's the reality that we are [00:26:00] not just an input-output system, we are a processing system as well. The black box that remains between the input and output is our brain. It's extremely powerful and we have to learn to use it. I remember a few years ago, there was a book published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, I think it was by Raj Persaud, The Mind: A User's Guide, I think it is time we write about Brain: A User's Guide as well. It will not be a small book, and it will not be very definitive as well and it will keep evolving as we write about it. Yes, Ramanand, there is already a book like that. Right?
Ramanand: I wanted to ask, what is it about the brain that more psychiatrists and psychologists should know? Does your community use the brain better than the rest of us because you have insights into it?
Dr. Bhooshan: I wish I could give that answer as 'Yes'. But, no. I don't think mental health professionals use their brain any differently. There is a reason for that. Mental health professionals are a self-selected lot, like all the professions. I know medical students who would say that I would rather go and sweep streets than becoming a psychiatrist. There are people who choose not to take psychiatry even when it is the only branch available. Then there are people like me, who gun for it for two years and three years and make sure that they get that particular seat. So, we are a self-selected lot. We are interested in human beings, you can say human misery, we get our kick out of helping people, digging them out of holes. We take pride in the kind of empathy that we have. So we are not necessarily what you can say normal people.
And when I say normal, I mean normative in a statistical way, not as a qualitative statement. We are a different lot. Do we use our brain better? I think for that, you will have to ask our [00:28:00] spouses and our children. And they will probably tell you that we are slow in responding. When we are mentally not so stressed out, we take our time to respond. And that is one thing that mental health work teaches you that there is no hurry to respond. We are not Olympic athletes, we are not competing here for black belt of judo, or karate or whatever that you like. We take our time to respond. That is one of the biggest lessons that I have learned. If you can put the time difference, if you can increase the time between stimulus and response, then you get a chance to modify. The shorter the time, the more the instinct takes over.
But if you can actually put some kind of time difference there and stretch it, as you must have noticed, meditation is all about stretching that limit. Meditation is all about making that actually infinite and not giving a response at all. That is what I think we hopefully have learned. That doesn't make us better investors. That probably doesn't make us better friends. I don't even know if it makes us better human beings. But that definitely prevents quite a few disasters in personal life.
Ramanand: There's a great book called Wait, I don't know if you've heard of it. It's just got a one-word title, which actually delves into this in different fields. In fact, some of it you've just spoken about - sports, how delays in tennis are different from delays in a sport like cricket. You get different timeframes to work with, and investing. It also has a great discussion about the vagus nerve. Fascinating book called Wait that I think we should recommend to everyone.
Dr. Bhooshan: Any book on vagus nerve is highly recommended.
Harish: I'm also reminded of the famous quote from PV Narsimha Rao, 'not taking a decision is also [00:30:00] a decision'. You don't have to quickly jump to something, wait, pause.
Dr. Bhooshan: Absolutely. So, when you ask a question to a child and the child says, I don't know, we need to respect that and give them time. Most of the time.
Harish: At this point, you know that we love our quizzing, so we are not going to let you go without any quiz questions. So we've sprinkled a few quiz questions on this. To make sure we get your brain fully engaged, we'll have something at stake as well. So for every question you answer correctly, we'll give you a spot on one of our CTQ compounds that you can use the way you want. That's what's at stake. So, the first question, and Ramanand also hasn't seen this question. In case you need help, I don't think you will, but in case you need help, you can get Ramanand also to help you. So, first question of today. There was this Netflix series, which was shelved after two seasons this year. It's a crime thriller.
I'll give you some of the names of the episodes.
Dr. Bhooshan: I don't watch. I don't have Netflix.
Harish: I guessed that but I still think that you should be able to crack this.
Ramanand: Neither do I. So, it's fine.
Harish: Some of the episodes are titled, Hysteria, Trauma, Somnambulant, Regression, Catharsis. Whose life was fictionalized in this series?
Dr. Bhooshan: Sounds like Sigmund Freud.
Harish: Yes, it is Sigmund Freud. It's a fictionalized life of Freud, where he's supposed to be this crime detective who's solving crimes in the 1880s, Vienna.
Ramanand: I don't know if Bhooshan knows this, but this is famous in the Sherlock Holmes canon, [00:32:00] there is a story called The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. It's a stray reference to a phrase in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories. [Spoiler alert] Holmes is suffering from cocaine addiction, which is hinted at a few times. Freud treats him. Freud appears, and there is some connection. I haven't read it myself, but it is one of those famous ones. One of the things that I discovered about Freud, through the process of setting a quiz one day, was the manner of his death, which was quite fascinating. I don't know if you've heard of the circumstances of that. But it's quite fascinating.
Dr. Bhooshan: His jaw cancer and his struggle with the pain and all of that.
Harish: Right. At this point we'll take a quick break, and we'll see you on the other side.
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Harish: Welcome back to this side of the break. We referred to the CTQ Compounds just before the break in the question, the prize that you won. You've already won one prize, Bhooshan. Everyone who joins these CTQ Compounds is looking at some kind of self-development or self-change. We know you're trained in hypnosis, both of us have done your self-hypnosis bootcamp. [00:34:00] So what is the role of hypnosis in self-change?
Dr. Bhooshan: First thing about CTQ Compounds, I think I was a member of one of the first ones. That was a huge learning experience for me, somebody like me, who likes to read, likes to read on a very diverse range of topics and interact with people who are interested in reading, it's a huge experience. I highly recommend it. This was not a commercial break; this is a spontaneous endorsement of a very good product. So, coming back...
Ramanand: The money will be mailed to you soon!
Dr. Bhooshan: Coming back to the self-hypnosis part. We talked about stories and we talked about multi-sensory experiences. If we put these two things together, we know that stories with multi-sensory experience and another component is future orientation. If you can see our future self, the changed self, we've dug into the story, then it is possible for us to make that change happen more easily. That is where self-hypnosis comes into play. One thing that we know by working with patients for over a century now is that emotions drive our behaviour and repetitive behaviour becomes a habit. So unless you change the fundamental emotion that goes with that behaviour, or that triggered that behaviour, you cannot actually change the habit.
Anxiety is one of the biggest emotions at play with all of us. Though we don't know that, but most fundamental emotions of anxiety, anger, and negative emotions actually drive us quite a lot. So, if we can get hold of that emotion, if we can change that fundamental emotion, then behavioural change is much easier. That is where self-hypnosis comes into work. Because it is one of the very powerful methods of reducing anxiety. Anxiety and flexibility are literally [00:36:00] inversely related. Less the anxiety, more flexibility you will have. So if you want to make any change, one needs to rule out difficult emotions, particularly anxiety from the situation.
Harish: A quick related question on that. We often hear people say that channel your negative energy, channel your anger into something positive. Is that even right or is it just a construct again?
Dr. Bhooshan: I don't know what negative energy is. I can venture about negative emotions a little bit. What we know is that emotions are our instincts. Unfortunately, I don't have that quote with me right now. This is David Attenborough's quote, he talks about emotions being the instincts, which are with us. He said, these are ancestors’ voices that stay in our head through our DNA and they enact themselves. They can be changed, modified to an extent, but they do govern our life to a large extent. One of the biggest things about emotion is that people talk about emotion as if they have control on it.
One of the biggest learnings from mental health is that we do not have control on how we feel. We are not responsible for how we feel. It is totally beyond us. Like the colour of our eyes, like our sexuality. How we feel is not something that we control. The only thing that we control is how do we respond to that? What do we do after we feel? So the first step is always being aware of the emotion, having the emotional vocabulary, giving oneself the training to recognize emotion before acting on that, and that is something that is really important. So, coming back to your question about channelizing negative energy, I try to understand that, that people tell you stories of other people who have been in terrible life experiences, and have made something great out of it, the sublimation. [00:38:00] The classic example that we have used so many times is Erich Fromm, who spent a significant chunk of his mature life in concentration camps, got out of that, and did in style, and did really well and helped so many other people. Can that be called channelizing negative emotional energy? I don't know, because he didn't talk about negative energy when he was in concentration camp. He was behaving like a scientist there.
One thing we know is that emotion itself is energy. I never get tired of saying that emotion is the engine in your car. You cannot say that I don't want emotions. That is like throwing out the engine. What you want is an excellent guidance system, which can control this engine. So positive emotions and negative emotions both generate a lot of action energy. Let us put a good control system on that so that we can use this car and have fun.
Harish: Another thing that comes to mind is giving that pause between the emotion and how you respond, I think it's coming back to the same thing, use the control system that you're talking about.
Dr. Bhooshan: Absolutely. You need time to engage that gear.
Ramanand: I have a couple of questions on the hypnosis workshop that you do. One is that, before we met you, something like this would have sounded like a scam, to put it very bluntly. A lot of people that we speak to, there's a lot of curiosity because we've heard there's a lot of negative press or the way it is depicted in stories is always some mesmerizing character who can... loss of control, I think is the big fear that people have. So, the word self before it, comes as a kind of reassurance. The first question is [00:40:00] why did you start a workshop like this? Because I don't know anyone else offering a workshop to it.
Since you spoke of guidance, a lot of us come to this workshop because we know you, and we trust you to take our hands into this world. Secondly, what I realized during those couple of days, was that I am fairly, I would say, emotionally illiterate until a point. You come in, you don't know the vocabulary. You are not trained to recognize different flavours of emotion. There is a gradation to a lot of it. There are a lot of things that seem to have just bypassed us, if you've stumbled upon it, fine. But that entire range of literacy seems to be absent, which is what a lot of us also get when we come to a Bootcamp or spend some time listening to you. So, one is how did this start? What can give it some recognition in terms of its powers? And finally, what should we do to have that emotional literacy and help others around us have that emotional literacy?
Dr. Bhooshan: Let me try and answer those questions one by one. First is that when I studied psychiatry during my residency, one of the textbooks of psychiatry, The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, at that time, had about 2000 pages. Three-fourths of one page was given to hypnosis. Somehow, the way I have a nose for these things, I got hooked on to that. But I realized that, I talked to my professors, my seniors, and they dismissed it out of hand as a scam, as you just said. 'These are suggestible people; stuff happens to them.' At that time, we were big on possessions and all of that, and all that funny thing was happening. I was on a [00:42:00] brain drive. I dismissed it out of hand. It just stayed away for quite some time.
Then when I went to the UK, one of the senior nurses working with me, had recently done this medical hypnosis course from London School of Clinical Hypnosis, LCCH. He told me ‘Bhooshan, this is really interesting, you should give it a try.’ I was in the mood to try something new. And I said, if there is a formal training that is happening here, I don't want to miss this opportunity. So I did my diploma in medical hypnosis, a year-long diploma. I found it to be absolutely fascinating. When I came back to India, first thing that I realized is that if I open my hypnosis clinic, I would be driving a Bentley very soon, because there were already people not very far away from me, who had put up 10,000 and 15,000 square foot hypnosis clinics, and were making serious money.
But as we know, so do temples, so do churches and mosques, and so do pani puri stalls. My aim was in empowering people. Because my take is that if you need to come back to me again and again, then I'm actually a drug dealer. I'm getting you hooked on to that. I don't want repeat customers. I want you guys to go away and have this power to change things as you want under your control. Self-hypnosis is one of the most powerful ways of doing that. That is why I don't see clients personally in therapy for a long time. I may see later on again, to have fun because I keep changing patterns of my practice every five or 10 years to stay interested or if something takes my fancy. But that is why I decided to teach people self-hypnosis, and I designed a workshop in such a way that it is not only about hypnosis, it is about understanding the mechanics of mind and having tools to change that. That's why I call it rewriting the code. Can you rewrite your own code? And yes, to a certain [00:44:00] extent it is possible. That is where self-hypnosis comes in.
The second question about emotional literacy that you talked about, I think, as in any literacy, there are three very clear components there. First is that you need to have vocabulary, you need to have a language. Second thing is that you need to know something about how this works. And third is that you need to have skills to use that knowledge and that vocabulary and that is exactly how emotions work. Now some people will put this as you're talking about emotional quotient or emotional intelligence.
Let me tell you, there is nothing in this world called emotional quotient. There is emotional intelligence, yes, pretty much there is emotional intelligence. Is it measurable and can it be called emotional quotient? No, because to call something a quotient, you need a denominator and the denominator needs to be very carefully, widely, properly chosen. We don't have that yet. So we don't know about emotional quotient. But emotional intelligence, yes. And it is possible to learn that vocabulary in day to day life. I do this exercise with adolescents many times. I do this with adults as well. And recently I did it with a bunch of residents in psychiatry. The results are equally stunning that how many emotional words do you know?
Shakespeare apparently had something like 400 to 500 words. On an average, a woman is supposed to have about 100-125 words. A man is supposed to have about half of that. But when I actually let people sit down, give them an exercise to map their emotional vocabulary, in the last five years, I don't think I have come across anybody who has more than 25 or 30 words. That is how deprived we are of our emotional vocabulary. We don't know the shades of emotions at all. We don't have words for shades of emotion. We have just binary words for emotions. That makes us very helpless, that makes us like our dogs and cats. So that is indeed a very sad part of that.
I do honestly hope that this actually becomes part of education. [00:46:00] I don't mean education, as in there should be a chapter on this in the school and somebody should be taking exams, and somebody opening a coaching class or creating an app to learn emotional intelligence. It is about family and surrounding, and adults around the child actually using those words and making that child aware. So yes, there could be an app happening there.
Harish: One more thing that struck me when you were talking about how you change the way you practice. I remember once you told us at one of our insight sessions that you have this cycle where there is a peak, and then another year or 18 months, you try to take things easy. Any comments on that? It's related to what you mentioned about your practice as well, is that a very deliberate thing that you want to make this change in your lifestyle?
Dr. Bhooshan: I don't think it is deliberate. I won't even claim it to be deliberate. It is something that is probably part of my nature, that I get enamoured by things I give everything, I go after it, after a while once I have explored it, I move on to find something else. So, that is I think the essential curious nature that I have. So, I move on to things, I need that level of stimulation. But one thing that I have learnt is that I don't go from one stimulation to another. I take a break in between. I let it consolidate, I let it convert to something that I do. So, every change that I have made, right from the day I went to medical college, has some vestiges still left in what I do today. So, I don't abandon it and move on to the next business. I don't slash-and-burn, I keep the seeds, I take them to the next destination with me and I sow those seeds with my new field as well. That is what I like to do.
In that period in between, which is more of an introspective period [00:48:00] where I like to see what I have done, where I have gone wrong, what can be changed, how does it look? Like for example, this lockdown has been a huge learning phase for everybody. I'm no exception to that. I realized that I can actually be happy with very little work. As a doctor that came as a surprise. I always thought that unless I have a tonne load of work on my hand and my busy schedule, and oh, man, I'm busy kind of Munnabhai kind of doctor, I won't feel fulfilled.
But I'm very happy seeing many fewer patients having larger breaks, spending more time with my patients and earning a lot less money. That still keeps me happy. That has taught me that you don't need to rush around. Anyway, you don't have time to do whatever you want to do with that money. So I made a conscious change. I've told myself, I sat down, I looked at my finances, and I said I definitely have enough resources so that there is a roof on my head and I will not go hungry. There will not be empty plates in front of my family. So now whatever I'm working for is for joy. And if I'm not enjoying this, if I can't do it right, I shouldn't be doing it. That has changed my practice quite significantly. I'm a lot more relaxed. My receptionist can tell you that.
When a patient misses an appointment, I don't immediately hit Twitter and complain about it. I just let it slide and sit there and read something else. I give longer time for the sessions. It's been more fun. Will this last? I don't know. Nothing has lasted for me for longer than a few years. So will this. Is this a permanent change in me? Unlikely, I hope so. Because then otherwise I would have to declare that I'm ageing. But yes, change is happening as we speak.
Harish: One thing that I've noticed in the last almost 45-50 minutes is how naturally you use the word 'yet'. It is not something that you are casting in stone. You are very aware of the fact that this is how it is right now and it can change. [00:50:00]
Dr. Bhooshan: I do believe in that, as they say, ghisa pita hai lekin sacha hai, you can never sit in the same river twice. And that is absolutely true. I do believe that at my molecular level. So yes, everything is yet.
Harish: Nice. Any tips for people wanting to change their habits? Or, for reading more frequently? What would be your actionable tips on that?
Dr. Bhooshan: Honestly, that's a very difficult question to answer, Harish. Because I don't think there is a single answer. We are very varied people. We all have our things to do. And that is exactly why you have so much advice floating around, because people think that what worked for them works for everybody. So though we have certain common things about our mind, the superstructure is definitely very different. It's like a colony of plots. Everybody is given a 5000 square foot plot, but no two bungalows look the same. Enter the houses, no two houses are arranged in the same way. That is something different that we have, but the concrete structure remains the same. So what one can say is that, find out what you gain from that habit.
A lot of people complain about how harmful that habit is, and then they try to change, and they fail. A habit needs to be changed. Before we attempt that, we need to know why this habit is there. What does it do for me? There is always something very valuable in each habit. Unless we find a way of keeping that value, we cannot change a habit. This is something that a lot of people don't realize.
Ramanand: I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I just wanted to also... in the last 50-odd years, there has been this emergence of positive psychology. I think one part of your [00:52:00] practice, the clinical daily practice is for the traditional, where people come to you, they have a problem, they want that problem to go away or be alleviated to some extent. And the work that you do around say, self-hypnosis, or parenting workshops, these are almost on the positive side, because there is no problem, you want to put in systems or habits that prevent those problems, hopefully, from ever happening. These days, people tell you journaling habits, gratitude habits, those kinds of things.
So, just tying back to what you said, which is that a lot of people examine their habits when things are not going well. I have a coffee habit, I have a smoking habit, it's all approached from a negative lens. But these preventative or these positive kinds of habits, do you think more people should look at habits from this lens, like something that 's almost like an exercise regime. You are not doing exercise because you have a backache, you're doing it because it makes you good on several levels.
Dr. Bhooshan: One thing that I have used myself, and that has worked for me, I don't know how many people will find that useful. But if there are so many ideas out there, I need to throw one with my name on it as well, that is the awareness that we have limited time. There is only so much time in the day, there are only so many things that you do. There is only so much length of time that is available to you and we don't know how much that length is. So my aim is to make the best of this.
This is probably the only area in my life, where I'm not happy with just optimization. I want to move even beyond that and I want to maximize stuff. Whatever habits I have, are my time-saving features. Right? But are they effectively doing that? Are they good habits? Whenever I picked them, they were helpful. But are they good enough now? [00:54:00] So I want to share those habits one by one, I want to free up time and I want to invest that time into something which is even more meaningful, like writing, like reading, like spending time with friends or family and stuff like that. So that awareness is something that is very important for me.
What I have seen over the last six months happening in the medical community. In my own home, my wife is an intensive care specialist and she hasn't had a single day off in the last six months. She looks after COVID ICU of Symbiosis Hospital. There hasn't been a single day off and there is a very acute awareness that there are many more valuable, enjoyable things than what we do by habit in real life. And I think that value proposition is really important for me. That is why I exercise because I want to have a more capable body. That is why I read because I want to be better informed. I want to make better decisions. So I'm selling myself a story of a better human being, who lives a healthier life, who's more fit, who's maybe 82 years old in some time, but is still completely independent. I have seen so many seniors being really helpless or being packed up in their houses, because they are now very vulnerable and their life actually being reduced to living hell, because they are vulnerable and stuff like that. So, my change comes from the story that I sell myself.
And here, I'm trying to sell myself a story that here is a person who is fitter in his body, more agile in his mind, and more in control of where he wants his life to go. That brings change for me. If that story is good for you, then you fill in the components of what habits you need, what that person does on a day to day basis? And then start living that life.
Harish: I think this is the right time to go to the next section. The question that I have before the [00:56:00] next section, which is a comment on what we have spoken till now, and sets it up for the next part. So this second question for you is a quote from a commencement address. I'm going to read out that quote, and I want you to complete the quote. It's a long paragraph, and I'm going to give you pieces of that.
It starts with, "I hesitate to give advice, because every major single piece of advice I was given, turned out to be wrong. I'm glad I didn't follow them. I was told to focus and I never did..." and he gives a lot more examples. Then he says, "I was told to avoid lifting weights for back pain and become a weightlifter, and I actually started that, never had a back problem since. If I had to relive my life, I would be even more stubborn and uncompromising than I have been. One should never do anything without...", complete the quote for me.
Dr. Bhooshan: I think this is Nassim Taleb. I am right. One should never do anything without..." This is a tricky one.
Ramanand: It's the title of one of his books.
Harish: Yes.
Dr. Bhooshan: You've got me stumped there, completely.
Harish: So what will be the first thing that comes to your mind?
Dr. Bhooshan: Risk?
Harish: Okay, next thing that comes to your mind?
Dr. Bhooshan: Skin in the game.
Harish: Yes.
Dr. Bhooshan: I looked here. And I want you guys to have a look at this. I don't know if you can see my bookshelf, the end of that there is an entire Taleb collection there. It stays there forever. Never goes away. So yes, it's skin in the game.
Harish: Yes. So you've got that right. I wanted to pick your brains on that, as well. What about Taleb do you like so [00:58:00] much and how did he become an influence?
Dr. Bhooshan: It's a very strange story. When I came back from the UK in 2008-2009, one of my first patients was a 20-year-old. Until then, I had not started restricting myself to under 18 years old. This boy was brought to me by his father, because he would have very strange isolated behaviors. As I got talking to him, once I visited his house when he was really unwell, and he gave me a book as a gift. I don't know where he is now, I don't even know if he's alive. And that was Taleb's first book, Fooled by Randomness. I just got hooked on to that. It showed me a way to look at the world that I had never seen. One of the biggest things that hit me, I knew about people connecting the dots and making stories and all of that.
Being trained as a doctor, I am an interventionist. I am trained to rush in with supplies, and try to change people's lives. I am aware, again as a doctor, I'm trained to be aware of the risks of doing that. What Taleb showed me is how great those risks can be. Not only that, sometimes help can be harmful. And that is something that I learned from Taleb, that was a huge... the unknown. What you don't know can really hurt you, is one sentence that stayed with me and as a psychiatrist, I definitely know that we don't know a lot. So it taught me to be careful. And obviously once I like something, I explore that. I read practically everything that he has written and he continues to write. Taleb has become a very big influence on me. A few days ago, I put it on Twitter to ask people what single stuff has changed for themselves, and I had to tell my own answer [01:00:00] that long term harm of things is something that one needs to be really aware of, the turkey paradox. That is something that I have learned as a doctor, as a person and I try to put it in my practice as well. So he's obnoxious. I know that Taleb believes that psychology is a fraud, child psychiatry shouldn't really exist and all of that. He actually challenges my very being, but I know where he's coming from.
I agree with him on a lot of things. I agree with him on narrative fallacy. I agree with him that diagnosis like ADHD is distributed like candy in the USA, not the rest of the world, thankfully, but where his life experience is, child psychiatry can be quite a complicated part. So I understand where it's coming from. As they say, in Marathi, Tukaram Maharaj, has said very famously that 'Nindkache ghar asave shejari', that means your worst critic should be your neighbour, because you are on a path of self-improvement. So one needs to hear from that.
Harish: Who are the other influences? Who or what are other influences for you?
Dr. Bhooshan: Funnily enough, the other great influencer has been Leo Tolstoy, particularly War and Peace has been a huge change for me. Again, War and Peace talks a lot about narrative fallacy. It talks a lot about the role of luck in your real life. But it also talks about having some very clear fundamental principles that should never change no matter what circumstances you are in. So, classics continue to guide.
Another big influence on me in recent times has been Bibek Debroy. The length, breadth and depth of his scholarship has influenced me a lot. I like Dr. Uday Kulkarni's writing a lot. He was a Surgeon Commander, naval commander and then went on to investigate the 18th century. These are huge influences. People [01:02:00] like, in real life, people who are around and I'm lucky to meet them every day, like Amit Paranjape or Navin Kabra, who are very steadfast, very stable personalities, very knowledge-driven people. That helps me a lot.
Parents like you, who are taking different steps, who are working with their children in a very courageous way. Who are willing to take alternative routes, in their career, in their work, in their approach to money, in their parenting, the way they live their life. Because every step has a cost. I respect people who are willing to pay the cost. People want change, but they're not willing to pay the ticket for that. And you both have done that wonderfully well. This is what I like. This is what I think life is about, about meeting people, getting influenced by people. So I'm very open to getting influenced, I like getting influenced. Sometimes it has been bad, sometimes it has been good. But that has worked very well for me.
Harish: Since you have mentioned it, what are the bad influences? How have you been influenced, and when did you recognize it was a bad influence?
Dr. Bhooshan: See, my good influences have been my bad influences as well. All of them have certain things that they do from their life's position, and I may end up imitating them and doing something really stupid, which is actually either beyond my pale or beyond my ability and all of that. So, I think every good influencer has had a bad influence on me as well. I just hope that I have the discretion to differentiate between the two, as they say the niraksheera vivek that a swan is supposed to have, and that takes us back to Nassim Taleb, that he's extremely abrasive.
People tell me that in person, he's a very nice guy, but on social media, he's very abrasive and non-tolerant of nonsense. I actually got influenced and did that for some time. [01:04:00] Then I realised, no hang on, I can't do that. I'm a doctor, I'm a psychiatrist. This cannot be my public persona. I'm not like that in real life, so why am I trying to be like that in a small corner of the virtual world? That is stupid, I'm being a poser there. So I changed my ways after that, and anybody who has followed my tweets must have realized that there is a lot less sharpness, particularly the negative sharpness, it does come up every now and then because that is my original tendency as well. But I learned to put a lid on that. So my good influencers are my bad influencers as well.
Harish: Coming to social media, another thing that has struck me a lot is you talking about Sanskrit and you used to post this Subhashitani for some time. Again, tell us more about that. We don't see a lot of people, even knowing Sanskrit for that matter. Knowing it well enough to read it past their class nine, which is when I read Sanskrit the last time. Though I do remember a couple of shlokas still and I find them very inspiring. But you seem to be like a... it's like another language that you use regularly.
Dr. Bhooshan: Actually, I may be giving that impression. But my Sanskrit is quite pathetic. I barely scratched the surface here and there. And it is more about poetry and all of that. If you take me to the grammar, I'll be completely lost. I learned Sanskrit in 8th, 9th, 10th standard and continued it in 11th and 12th as well. My parents managed to find a teacher for me, who was a clerk in state transport at that point of time. The man was 12th standard educated, but a self-taught Sanskrit Acharya.
He taught me and two more of my friends, we used to have a personal tuition with him. He never charged any money for that. He was just happy that there was somebody willing to sit with him and learn. There were no textbooks. He wouldn't take our textbooks, and made it very clear that this is not going to get you more marks [01:06:00] in Sanskrit. But if you like to learn the language and enjoy the beauty of it, there you go. That is where I learned and that is where a lot of Subhashitanis and all of them came in, and it was good fun. What I like about Sanskrit is its way to condense things. Two actually, one is condensing things in short, one or two sentences. And second is using metaphors, which I find to be the central existence of my use of language. I love metaphors. I enjoy metaphors. Marathi has a tradition of Sant Sahitya. And Sant Sahitya thrives on Drushtant, which is essentially metaphors. I love that. I find it very easy to use it and I find it extremely useful in my clinical work because I talk about very different concepts, very complicated concepts.
I should be able to explain that to the person sitting in front of me, irrespective of his background. That is where the ability to use metaphors and explain things comes very handy. I'm able to coin things in short single sentences that people can take away and that can change them. People call it a mantra, I know it is not a mantra at all, it doesn't have that power. But then people are able to remember that and that is where Sanskrit helps me a lot. Sanskrit helps me choose the correct word. Sanskrit helps me condense concepts. Sanskrit helps me give metaphors and it has been the love of my life. I still can't follow it through well enough, because honestly, there is no time. And as I have taken a conscious decision, I cannot, I will not devote that much time to learning Sanskrit, at least, yet. Not now, maybe after a few years, it will bite me again. But it's been great fun. I did that for a year, or I think a few 100 Subhashits, one every day. And it was great fun. I enjoyed that while it lasted.
Harish: On that note, when you're talking about bringing these metaphors and talking about brevity, [01:08:00] when is it that you should be aware of the danger of losing the nuance of it? Because I think these days, it's also challenging to try to make it very simple in order to convey a meaning. But then, there's this danger of assuming that that's what it is, there's no nuance to it.
Dr. Bhooshan: I'll tell you how I use it, I don't know whether that is the right way or not. But how I use it is, and again I have borrowed this from somebody, I don't remember who said it. Probably Navin Kabra will be able to tell us about that... again this is a very unconscious process. Initially I did it consciously, but now it has become a very unconscious process. You keep on taking away words, and it sharpens the meaning. And then you realize that you reach a stage where if you take away more words, it will actually distort the meaning, that is the point where you stop. So you use a minimum number of words without ever distorting the meaning. I don't try to fix everything in a single sentence. No, not at all. But I want to have multiple single sentences which carry a huge amount of weight, which have huge value. So that is what I use.
I'm not after slogans. I'm not after keywords. I'm not after a single sentence smart quips, I'm just trying to take away the chaff from the wheat in language. That is all that I'm trying to do.
Harish: Ramanand, you have a question?
Ramanand: No, I just wanted to say that there is one variation of this quote by the author of the book The Little Prince, where he says that great design is not when you have nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away.
Dr. Bhooshan: So who needs a Navin when you have Ramanand?
Ramanand: I can fill in for him until we get him.
Harish: Coming back to [01:10:00] reading and influences, what is your take on these pop psychology books? Anything that you have liked? What do you like about them if there is any, what is it that you hate?
Dr. Bhooshan: I actually do not have a single pop psychology book on my shelf. I have never wasted my money on that because I had access to, as they say, hard-core psychology, human psychology. Okay, now I think I'm going in my crazy corner. So bear with me a little bit. Because I'm going to malign an entire nation. This is a very American trend that you come across... you know, people do their PhD in a single subject, they're supposed to do that, because PhD requires you to have a single subject, but then it constricts your world to that single line or single piece of research. And the real world is a lot bigger than that. As we know that PhDs don't pay very well. So, you need to make money.
Somebody found out that if I can convert my lifetime of research into a book that people can consume, and be very happy about, then that makes me more money. Who cares about the truth there. So I think we started with the emotional intelligence book, which has a grain of truth in it, obviously, you cannot grow a tree without a grain of truth being there. But then the entire book can actually be reduced to two simple facts that we have emotions, and we are not aware of them. But then there is an art. And I'm in awe of that art, the American art of dressing up a grain so well that it looks like a Palace of Versailles. And then selling tickets to that, to people. That's a wonderful American way of doing it.
But obviously, like every American thing, it is taken and blown out of proportion and everybody writes a pop psychology book. [01:12:00] And these books won't last. In fact, now I make it a point not to read stuff on New York Times bestselling bestsellers, and all of that. Because I don't think like, again, I think I'm following Taleb here, that unless things have longevity, unless they have passed the test of time, they shouldn't be trusted. And I'm not in a hurry to know the latest stuff. I'm not worried about being at the cutting edge of psychology because nobody knows where the cutting edge of psychology is. What is sold to me as cutting edge of psychology definitely is not. That is one thing I know, for sure. Alexander Fleming, we celebrated his Nobel Prize-winning a few days ago, I mean, the anniversary of that a few days ago, it took 10 years to have Penicillin commercially available after he invented it or after he discovered it. So the day it was discovered by Alexander Fleming as something that kills bacteria, or gram-positive bacteria was not the day it was cutting edge of science. We don't even know exactly how cutting edge of science happens. It doesn't. There is no label that this thing is cutting edge of science, we simply assume it, and 99 out of 100 times, it just disappears. It is never the cutting edge, it is just the steam that science gives off every now and then. So I think pop psychology has a lot to do with that. What it tells me is that people are immensely interested in their brain, in their mind. They are interested in improving their performance, which is again, not something that I do because I go by happiness rather than performance. And there is a market for that and people need to be really careful.
Take the list of all the big books that are kind of earth-shattering every year. Most of them are out of print by now. If you take 10 and 15-year-old books, if Kindle wasn't there, and if Amazon wasn't there, so that every scrap of books lying in somebody's dump can be sold, these books won't be available in the market today. Because they're not worth it. They're absolutely not worth it. It wouldn't be worth an exercise [01:14:00] I think for you guys to find out which were the bestselling pop psychology books over the last 20 years and where are they now? And do those theories still hold or they have been debunked a long time ago? So, I'm very sceptical of pop psychology, unless I write a book and try to sell it.
Harish: On that note, what would be the books that you would recommend to people to read about for understanding more about brain, even if they are not as florally written, in a floral language or a very easy to understand language like these pop psychology books and I think that's one of the reasons why they're so easily accepted is that it suddenly debunks or demystifies it, the language is easier, they'll give examples from pop culture and all that. Which is why it is easier to understand. So even if these books are not that easy to understand, what are the three definitive books that you would recommend that everyone should read?
Dr. Bhooshan: It's very difficult to give answers to that, Harish. Instead of recommending three books, allow me to quote three of my teachers, and maybe you guys will be able to... everybody will be able to find them. The first is as usual, Nassim Taleb, who talks a lot about classics, the old books, and those that have survived beyond 200, 300, 400 years, they are really important. Though they are not written as psychology books, they're all about the human mind. One should be reading about those books and making one's own assumptions instead of reading a ready-made psychology book, that is my take. The way I have found Tolstoy, extremely psychologically minded, and very useful. Anybody who reads Dostoevsky will know the darkest corners of the human mind and how they work and how we go about it. That is [01:16:00] one thing.
And of course, there is Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Thinking Fast and Slow. I think you read that one book and you've pretty much got the gist of psychology for next 20 years also. Second teacher is Dr. Mohan Agashe, who's a theatre personality and a psychiatrist. I was lucky to have him as my teacher for a while. He talks about seeing a lot of theatre and now because of YouTube, a lot of stuff is available to us. Theatre is essentially about very deep human emotions and routine human behaviours. There is a lot to learn there that nobody gives you... watch those plays, which don't tell you what is the moral of the story. That is very important, because the moral of the story really isn't. So plays which leave you unsatisfied, plays which leave you with questions, are the kind of plays that you should be reading or watching. That is what I learned from Dr. Mohan Agashe.
And the third teacher who I haven't mentioned yet but probably has the most influence on my life so far is Dr. Neha Pandey, who was my postgraduate teacher and later I learned psychotherapy with her, talks about reading literature in your mother tongue. She made me read Shanta Shirke, she made me read Dhaneshwar. She wanted me to simplify my language and make it easier for communication without losing the emotional touch of that. Again, poems, poetry and stories and mythology is what she talked about, and that influenced me a lot. This is all about psychology. These books don't come with a label of psychology but the very essence of psychology. For example, there is one couplet by Vinda Karandikar, which essentially means that if there is no strength in your arms, if there is no source of water in your backyard, [01:18:00] you shouldn't attempt planting a flowering tree.
I use that in my parenting workshops and I find that incredibly powerful. I know parents who are driven to tears when they hear these lines, and they realize that effort is required, time is required, a sacrifice is required. Unless we are ready to sacrifice something, no change is going to happen. But these are two lines, which can make such a huge difference. So poetry is another source. I have read a little poetry. I don't read a lot of it, and I restrict myself to a few poets. And they are all Marathi. I don't read poetry in any other language. So poetry is an excellent source for you. So that is what I will talk about. No single name of a book, but these three philosophies that I have found very useful.
Harish: Again, when you are saying this, something else struck me. Language and communication is such an integral part of whatever you are doing, whether you are a psychiatrist or any other physician, or you're trying to sell yourself a story, or you are a parent or you're trying to get an innovation idea to the next level or whatever, but we do not generally accord that value to language, and the intricacies of language. How can people get better at language? Language is always seen as this... oh, humanities, no future in it. In schools, it is ignored and as adults also you feel that I know how to converse means I know language, and you're ignoring and losing the power of language that you can harness. What should people be doing about that?
Dr. Bhooshan: I think people need to first remember that language actually gives you access to other people's brains and hearts. It's a superpower that we have. And to take the superpower lightly is the stupidest thing you can ever do. [01:20:00] That's like wasting your life. Just yesterday, when I was teaching psychiatry residents at Lovely Medical College where I was an honorary consultant, once a week, we were talking about presenting short cases in the exam. And when you ask the question, students who knew their stuff very well started rambling on and talking about irrelevant things, and I would stop them after two or three sentences, what are you talking about? What you have said so far is already in the case vignette that is left in front of. You are wasting my time. You have to realize that as an examiner, I'm interested in passing you, I don't want to fail you. Because failing somebody requires a lot of paperwork, backing up why I failed you.
The person who has passed never applies for a reassessment of his papers. But people who fail do. Failing you actually increases my work, give me a reason to pass you. Speak with the end in mind. So before you open your mouth, you need to know where you want to reach. And then you want to make that path depending on the purpose and the occasion, as beautiful as possible, as quick and sharp as possible. One needs to know that. I do that in parenting workshops as well.
There are three or four aims of every conversation. Are you listening? Are you instructing? Are you saying no? Or are you having a discussion there? Know what you're achieving there. Because each game has different rules. You can't take a cricket bat to a baseball game. So if you're saying no, you cannot be in a listening mode there. So know what you want to achieve and alter your conversation, your communication according to that. This is something very important. Even on these Zoom calls now, people get a chance and they just go on speaking. Do you really have something to say? If you don't, don't switch on your mic! Finish it in a single sentence.
We see that in conferences all the time, [01:22:00] that you have five minutes for question and answer. And the first chap who stands up, asks a question that lasts four and a half minutes. And at the end of that minute, my answer is yes. He obviously has a statement to me and he's disguising it as a question. Answer is either yes or no. That was a stupid question to ask. That was a very stupid way of asking questions. So let's be more sharp here, we don't have so much time. People don't realize that. You really don't have so much time. I've already had two of my classmates and my junior who have had a heart attack in the last six months working with patients. We honestly do not have time. Let's use it well, and that's where communication comes in, let it be effective. Let it be deep, let it be meaningful. Otherwise, just keep your silence, that works better than communication.
Harish: In fact, I remember in the self-hypnosis bootcamp, you had somebody from outside come in from a theatre background, who actually told us about the intonation as well. So if it is so important for me to convey that message to myself, I can just imagine the power that I was just letting waste.
Dr. Bhooshan: Absolutely. And that's why we want to watch theatre, right? That is where Dr. Agashe's advice comes in handy. That theatre is not about what they say. But it is how they say it. What is their body language and when do they keep quiet? Good theatre always has long pauses. And that is when they get their audience thinking and feeling and moving with them. That's the power.
Harish: How do you stay relevant? How do you make sure that you are staying relevant? And this is a question that popped up in our minds when we were thinking that, I'm sure in your undergraduate studies, you would not have read about people being addicted to their smartphone. Or, in your case, it becomes even more interesting, where you have [01:24:00] to be in tune with what the teenagers and children, where are they spending their time? What games or apps are they spending their time on? So how do you keep yourself relevant?
Dr. Bhooshan: Well, I don't know whether I'm relevant or not, that is for other people to tell me. They will have different opinions, and I'll conveniently choose the opinions which are favoring me. So I honestly don't know. This is probably my natural tendency and I'll tell you what the tendency I realized to be is I'm curious. I'm interested in young people. I'm not judgmental about them, most of the time. But I'm genuinely interested in what makes them tick. What makes their parents tick? Because the generation of parents that sits with me in my clinic now, I already have my older one who's 19 years old, when I'm dealing with parents who have three and four-year-old children, I am two generations away from them. But I'm curious and that curiosity keeps the edge quite sharp. I try to explore, I try to understand, I try to listen, I try to read. That is what keeps one alive. So if you want to be relevant, don't aim to be relevant. Just continue on your curiosity, and you might find that you are relevant for at least some spot of time.
Harish: I think that's a great point which segues into the next section, the last section about future relevance. But before that, we'll have one more question and this is the last question for today. I am going to quote from this... In 2017, management of the Tsukuba Express line between Tokyo and the city of Tsukuba in Japan made an announcement on social media saying they sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. What was the reason why they had to issue this [01:26:00] apology note?
Dr. Bhooshan: Oh, yeah. If I remember this correctly, they arrived before time.
Harish: You're almost there. The train departed 20 seconds early.
Dr. Bhooshan: Yeah, they departed before time.
Harish: So, again, you get that right. What do you ascribe to as your habit of being punctual? And also, why do you seem like an outlier on a habit, which should be the norm? Being on time or before time should actually be the norm. But given when you post these photos on Twitter about you reaching before time or something like that, it's usually met with this, 'Oh, wow. You know, he's doing something different.' You should not be an outlier. But you are. Why?
Dr. Bhooshan: Even in my life, that is an outlier of all the good and bad bunch that I have. If you ask people who are really close to me, who live with me, they'll tell you that other than arriving on time, I actually don't do anything right. So that is my corner of something that I'm trying to keep polished all the time. Harish, I honestly don't know. That is how I have always been. I have reached school before time, I have been to tuitions before time, I reach everywhere before time. I'm always worried about getting lost and not being there on time and making people wait. And I hate that. I hate waiting and I am high on empathy. So I empathize with the person who's going to wait for me or with whom I have an appointment. I try to be there on time. I think I get it right almost 97-98% of the time.
I honestly don't see that as a quality. It hurts. It has a very significant cost attached to it. Not just emotional, but even financial. I'm probably the only doctor in this city and probably in India, who is never late to see his patients. It is very rare that a patient will have to wait to see. If you're given a specific time [01:28:00] you will be seen within two to three minutes, at the most five minutes of that. I don't overbook because I value their time. I like an empty waiting room. I don't like a crowded waiting room. It bothers me. Because I see children, I see very troubled children and I know how difficult it is for parents to even get them to the clinic. So making them wait there for minutes, hours is not something that I really like.
I probably am the only one who charges people for missed appointments. If they don't inform me within 24 hours before the appointment, I actually charge them for missed appointments. Because that's the empty time, then I have to sit around for 30-45 minutes, whatever their appointment time was, I don't double book. I'm not happy, I have a lot of bad reputation, and terrible Google reviews for that. So it's not necessarily a quality that people like. But this is the way I am. And as I said, now I'm working for pleasure and I hope everybody reaches there very soon. So that's the way it is.
Harish: All right. Coming to the last section for today, we're going to give you some terms, people, things, ideas, notions, and we want you to comment on what is going to be the future relevance of whatever we are asking.
Dr. Bhooshan: Wow.
Harish: First one, what is going to be the future relevance of psychiatry?
Dr. Bhooshan: I think psychiatry is going to disappear. The part of psychiatry which is now explained by neural sciences and for which there is medicine available will be taken over by neurologists, paediatricians, general physicians and everybody. The part of psychiatry, which is the art of psychiatry, of psychotherapy, and all of that will be taken over by psychology. Psychiatry will cease to exist as it exists now and we are looking at probably the next 15 to 20 years. And psychiatrists will have no one else to blame for that other than themselves, because they didn't stay relevant and empathetic. [01:30:00]
Harish: What about the future relevance of something like reading?
Dr. Bhooshan: In some form, again, I would like to invoke Nassim Taleb here. Reading has a Lindy effect. Reading has been around for a few 1000 years, it will stay relevant. The forms may change, but reading will not go away. Not in our lifetime. Definitely, even for the youngest listener, I can tell you that books will still be in print for next 100 years, new books will still be printed for next 100 years. I'm very sure of that.
Harish: Like how the gramophone records have outlived the CDs for sure.
Dr. Bhooshan: Absolutely.
Harish: Okay. What about the future relevance of something like religion?
Dr. Bhooshan: Oh, again, the same Lindy effect. I think religion is going to be here practically forever, in some form or the other. And this is a very sad realization for me. But people need those stories. People need structures, people need heuristics. Religion does that job better than anyone else. Let atheists like me complain about the side effects of religion. But the thing that religion brings into people's life is very much relevant. It's not going away at all.
Harish Kumar: Started with him, we are not ending it, but yeah, what about the future relevance of Mahatma Gandhi?
Dr. Bhooshan Shukla: Some principles will continue to stay relevant, people will find interest in that. So Mahatma Gandhi kind of becomes a cult. There will always be a few followers, who will be fanatic followers and who love Gandhi. And they will keep him alive and relevant, and people will keep on reinventing him. So Gandhi is going to be around for a very long time.
Harish: At the risk of this being the trigger for actually another two-hour long session, I'm going to ask you that last question, what [01:32:00] is the future relevance of human brain, given what we are reading about Neuralink and what Elon Musk is trying to do and all those things, what is the future relevance of human brain?
Dr. Bhooshan: All these are extensions or empowerments of the human brain. So the basic human brain doesn't go away at all. Definitely not in our lifetime. These technologies that we are talking about are performance boosters for the human brain. And they are still focusing on a single function, whittled down to a very specific function in our brain. The whole brain, we don't even understand it yet. It's way too complex for present awareness of science. Brain will probably get, I won't say more powerful, because we're getting more controlled. So the brain will continue to grow weaker and weaker for a large chunk of society. And a very small chunk of society will continue to use their brain to rule over others. We have seen that with social media and everything. But the basic human brain doesn't go out of fashion at all.
Harish: Okay, hopefully and thankfully, it doesn't go out of fashion. Thanks a lot. This was a great stimulating hour and a half long conversation. Thanks a lot, Dr. Bhooshan. Three of your prizes, we'll send that across to you.
Dr. Bhooshan: Thank you. Thanks a lot, Harish. Thank you, Ramanand. This was a wonderful session. Your questions, obviously, I had no readymade answers to that. It made me dig deep. Now I still have a workday ahead of me. So I don't know how much brain I have left for that. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed this.
Harish: Thank you.